


Fic: Your Sun to Reach My Raindrops (Marcus/Esca, R)

by tracy7307



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-27
Updated: 2011-06-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 21:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tracy7307/pseuds/tracy7307
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Esca has a nightmare and Marcus comforts him.  (Violence/mention of non-con is a brief description of a battle right at the beginning of the fic).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fic: Your Sun to Reach My Raindrops (Marcus/Esca, R)

**Title** : Your Sun to Reach My Raindrops  
 **Rating** : R (barely)  
 **Pairing** : Marcus/Esca  
 **Word Count** : 1166  
 **Summary** : Esca has a nightmare and Marcus comforts him.  
 **Disclaimer** : _The Eagle_ and all its characters belong to Rosemary Sutcliff  
 **Content labels** : Violence and mention of non-con at the beginning  
 **AN** : My first fic for _The Eagle_ fandom. Written for [this](http://the-eagle-kink.livejournal.com/2132.html?thread=1843796#t1843796) prompt at [](http://the-eagle-kink.livejournal.com/profile)[**the_eagle_kink**](http://the-eagle-kink.livejournal.com/): _One of them cries, the other consoles. Hurt/comfort._

**Title borrowed from this poem by Rumi:**

**Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky  
And you lift me up out of the two worlds.  
I want your sun to reach my raindrops,  
So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.**  
  
~*~

_The attack rolled over the tribe like the unrelenting crash of choppy waves along a jagged shore. They’d come to conquer the people of the forest; not to reach out to them, to live peacefully alongside them – they wanted to own, to master the land and the people, to kill and enslave._

_Screams filled the chilled air as the night rolled on, darkness crowding their every movement. The Romans never gave the slightest breathing space, their mighty shields and swords merciless against the tribe. Even as the dawn came drizzling and grey, the sounds of men engaged in slaughter and rape surrounded Esca. A legionary bound Esca’s wrists as he watched a Roman sword spill his father’s intestines onto the forest floor and slit his brothers’ necks open. Bound and helpless, all he could do was watch and spit on the Roman in front of him, which earned him a sword hilt to the skull. Everything went black._

Esca’s scream sent Marcus sitting upright in their bed. Panic twisted in his gut as his hands reached for Esca, giving his arm a hard tug. Esca paused long enough to suck a breath and shout again, a shout that pierced the night air and sent fear through Marcus’s skin, down to his very bones.

“Esca,” Marcus said, this time shaking Esca’s bare shoulder. It wasn’t the first time Esca had shouted in the dark, his cry loud enough to unnerve the cattle and make the horses whinny in the stable, and Marcus knew it wouldn’t be the last. Ghosts haunted Esca’s mind still, leaving him shaking and shattered.

Marcus always picked up the pieces. After fourteen years of sharing Esca’s bed, he was well-versed in reassembling his lover.

“Wake, my heart.” Marcus’s hands wrapped around both of Esca’s shoulders, shaking him gently. The skin under his hands was hot to the touch, and Marcus recognized the sharp intake of breath that meant Esca had woken.

The moon glinted in Esca’s eyes as they focused onto Marcus’s face. Esca’s chest heaved, his hands still clenched into fists. This was the warrior of the Brigantes, fierce hatred gripping his heart, ready to strike out at that which should threaten him. In this half-conscious state, Marcus knew Esca saw a Roman next to him; a murdering, greedy Roman and only that.

“Esca, it is I,” Marcus said calmly, knowing better than to touch now. A touch would earn him a battle he did not want to fight, and he’d made such a mistake before, causing aftershocks he could not take back. “It is your Marcus.”

Esca blinked. Marcus watched as the present descended on him, the world of the nightmare giving way to the life they’d built together, like a curtain drawn back to reveal reality. The quickened rise and fall of his chest calmed and his shoulders slumped as the anger from his nightmare transformed into something else.

Grief wound its cruel fingers around Esca, pulling down his shoulders, gripping at his heart. This part of the routine, Marcus found most difficult. After everything they’d done together, after everything they’d been for each other, Marcus’s heart wept when seeing Esca in pain.

With shoulders shaking and chin ducked down to his chest, tears rolled down Esca’s cheeks. Marcus reached over, pulling Esca against his side, and wrapped his arms around Esca’s shoulders. Esca snaked his arms around Marcus’s waist, his soft hair brushing Marcus’s neck as he burrowed against him. “Sa, sa, my Esca. I am here now. I am here.”

Esca sobbed against Marcus’s strong shoulder, his sleep-hot body warm against Marcus’s skin. Years of loss and pain worked its way through Esca; it manifested itself very rarely, but when it did, it showed itself in the form of soul-shaking sobs. Behind the proud set of his shoulders and the fierce glint in his eye, Marcus knew that Esca grieved for those he lost. _His grief is like a palimpsest,_ Marcus thought – _I can attempt to smooth it out, but it will always be written into Esca’s soul._

Esca wept and wept – cried for his mother, for his father, for his brothers, and for an entire lifetime crushed at the hands of soldiers. His tears soaked Marcus’s shoulder and dripped onto his thigh. Marcus held his shuddering body, pressing feather-light kisses to his shoulder.

“I know,” Marcus whispered against his the shell of his ear, his large hand sliding down Esca’s back to rub slow circles. “I know.”

Silence stretched between them as a cloud moved and silver moonlight sliced through the window. The words of comfort spoken in this space throughout the years swirled unseen like hundreds of invisible dandelion seeds. Marcus remained silent and still, his arms strong for Esca, and in this place, peace settled on Esca, his heaving chest slowing to hiccupping breaths.

He sniffed against the damp skin of Marcus’s shoulder. Marcus didn’t need to see his face to know his eyes were red and puffy.

“Come, my heart,” Marcus said softly, “do you lie down with me.”

As Marcus curled around Esca’s back, ghosts of times past crowded the room. Esca’s memories hung like stars in the night sky, each one he’d whispered to Marcus in the night. Hunting trips with his brothers. His mother’s easy laugh and the wrinkles around her eyes as she smiled, her hands busy with making a pot, beautiful in her years. Carrying his small brother in his arms when he’d slipped on a moss-covered rock and knocked himself unconscious. His father’s low voice mingling with the warmth of the fire, reverent words that Esca had long committed to memory.

Esca revealed these to Marcus slowly, with each attack of grief, after Marcus asked him to tell him about each person he’d lost. His sobs would calm with each story he told.

Marcus sniffed the warm skin of the nape of Esca’s neck, kissing gently there. In the moonlight Marcus could not tell which of Esca’s hairs were copper and which were grey. No matter; Esca had teased him quite enough about the thinning hair on the crown of his head.

His hiccupping breaths had given way to a steady rise and fall of his chest, and Marcus wrapped his arm around Esca’s side, fingers tracing up and down the soft skin of Esca’s belly. On any other night Marcus would reach lower and stroke his cock until Esca panted his name and spread his release over Marcus’s fist, but not tonight.

Perhaps in the morning, Esca would wake Marcus by moving his hand to his hardened cock. Tonight, Marcus just spread his hand over Esca’s stomach, whispering into his disheveled hair:

“Into the Elysian Fields we will walk one day, my sweet. Until that day, I will be the mountain and you the breeze that wraps around me, whispering your secrets. Sleep well, Esca.”

As they drifted off into a deep slumber, the crickets sounded their mating call and the moon glinted silver-white on the river.


End file.
